Britain has decided to tighten sanctions on the Syrian regime after it discovered that President Bashar al-Assad and his associates duped European governments into releasing hundreds of millions of euros from frozen bank accounts.

“The UK has closed a loophole in EU-Syria sanctions to prevent the release of millions of euros of assets belonging to the Assad regime and its affiliates,” British Foreign Secretary William Hague said on Saturday, according to the Sunday Times.

Hague said that “hundreds of millions of euros” would no longer be available to “fuel Assad’s war machine.”

The cash - which had been frozen across the European Union since the beginning Syria's civil war - was diverted by Assad’s regime to feed his army instead of war's starving victims as it pretended.

“The evidence is clear that the regime and its financial backers will use every opportunity available to them to serve their own ends - war and profit - rather than help Syrians in serious need of humanitarian help,” Hague added.

The report also revealed that Union de Banques Arabes et Françaises (UBAF), which is partly owned by a subsidiary of French banking giant Crédit Agricole, confirmed that it had released funds after authorization from the French economy and finance ministry.

The ministry did not comment on the report.

Several shipments of wheat and barley were transported from France to Syria throughout the year, the report added.

The total unfrozen assets across the EU are estimated to run into the equivalent of hundreds of millions of euros, which represents a large proportion of all the Syrian regime assets frozen in Europe, according to the report.

EU foreign ministers will discuss in Brussels the tightening of the sanctions due to be operational this weekend.